Red Bull F1 boss Christian Horner has questioned McLaren’s strategy at the British Grand Prix not to put Lando Norris on the medium tyres for the final stint.
Norris took the lead after showing great pace during the crossover period to the intermediates.
However, the race went in Lewis Hamilton’s favour after Mercedes decided to pit for slicks one lap earlier than McLaren did.
This handed Hamilton track position but Norris was still in contention given Mercedes opted for the less durable soft.
But McLaren put Norris on the soft, which degraded heavily, causing him to lose out to Max Verstappen.
It was another missed opportunity for McLaren, who continue to underperform despite having a quicker car than Red Bull at Silverstone.
Speaking after the race, Horner said: “[McLaren] had a new medium in their pocket. Mercedes didn’t, we didn’t. Wow. I fully expected to see a yellow set of tyres go on there. Maybe they will look back with hindsight…
“You’ve got to congratulate Lewis. He is a fierce competitor, I know this one means a lot to him. A popular win, and well-deserved.”
Horner described the race overall was “bizarre” and felt running on the hards with Verstappen at the end gave them the best opportunity to maximise their result.
“We nearly ended up winning it. It was a bizarre race. In the first part, we just didn’t have the pace on the medium tyre,” he added.
“Mercedes looked like they’d got it under control. Then the rain came and McLaren looked like they’d got it under control. We were dropping off the back of it. At that point, I was worried about Carlos Sainz who was having a go at Max.
“We made the call to go onto the inter at the right time. That one lap extra, on the inter, while it leapfrogged us into third, I think we damaged the tyre a bit on that lap.
“Until the others got deg as well, we dropped off. We started coming back, things levelled out. Then it was about which tyre you take for the final stint. We’d seen that the softs didn’t look great, doing six or seven laps before falling apart for other cars at the start of the race. So we went for the hard tyre. It was our best chance.”